Make Your Garden Stand Out Using These Pretty Home Decorating Ideas!

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04/12/2018

Hi everyone, I wanted to show you how to make a plastic flower today (diy home ideas at work!). Now, this isn’t your regular run of the mill plastic flower. It’s going to be larger than life garden flower. What I like about these types of outdoor home decorating ideas, is that there’s no sketching needed. Everything is going to be done freehand! Let’s begin, shall we? So we will be using fire (candle), paint/glitter, glue, styrofoam ball, scissors, wooden rod and some plastic water bottles (any plastic bottle will work, even those 2-liter ones, I just think it’s easier to work with the smaller bottles). Kids, if you want to help take on this home decorating project, please remember to have an adult present.

Take your styrofoam ball and make a hole using the rod, next remove the rod and put some glue into the styrofoam and then re-insert the rod (this will make sure that the styrofoam ball doesn’t blow/fall off of our flower stem). Next, we are going to be mixing some paint for the ball and rod (stem) structure; I used green because it fits in with the garden narrative, next paint the entire structure from the ball and work down to the rod because when this is placed in the garden we want it to blend in as much as possible.

Leave that to dry and let’s begin making the "petals" of the flower (you can get some home design inspiration for your flowers by just walking through your garden). Now, cut the top part of the bottle off, make sure your scissors are sharp so you don’t have to hurt your hand (squeezing) trying to get that top part off. When that’s done you will start to cut the bottle into same size strips of plastic (cut lengthwise), you want it to be identical as possible because when it goes through the heat some shrinking and distorting will happen. After all the strips are cut, it’s time to pass it over the candle. You just want to melt it a little on both sides and the ends, during the melting wait for it to cool a bit and then just pull it tautly to make it look like a plastic spike if it bends just pass it through the heat and pull it straight again.

It’s now time to insert our petal-like spikes into the styrofoam, but before we do that mix together some glue, paint powder, glitter (of your choice) and then we will use a small, flat piece of wood to smear it over the ball where the petals will be inserted, do this in parts because you don’t want the glue to dry before the petal pieces go in. When all of your petals are put in allow it to dry overnight, the next day check to see if there are any spaces that need paint touch-ups and you can do that using a small paintbrush. Now that you have your giant flower all finished it’s time to put it on display in your garden!

These are some of the supplies you will need for this diy home decor project.

When I say get sharp scissors, this is why!

See why I insist on the sharp scissors? I took a while cutting through the tops of the bottles and I had to use more energy because my scissors we not as sharp as they should have been for this home decor project.

Getting those plastic strips in the styrofoam ball

Have a damp cloth at hand, because this part could get messy. Press the plastic strips into the ball but not all the way in since you want to maintain a certain length. Also, don’t put them all in a straight line, press them in all over indiscriminately.

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Retouching areas on the styrofoam that didn’t get enough paint. | colorful home decor

After you let this dry overnight, look to touch up any areas that might need more paint on the styrofoam ball. Again, colorful home decorating is perfect for the garden, so feel free to be as creative as you need to be.